Since Dobby the House Elf ascended the throne as Tsar of All the Russias, the Bear, as Messrs Kipling and Reagan should have said, is back in the woods.Doing, doubtless, what bears traditionally do in the woods.

The British Council – a quango registered as a charity, sponsored by the Foreign Office, and having HM the Queen as its patron – was established in 1934.Amongst its primary tasks is the provision of education.Including in the North Caucasus.

This has not pleased Dobbymir Dobbymirovich.

Bad things happen when Vladimir Vladimirovich is displeased.Let us see some of what occurs when the Little Father takes umbrage.

The British Council has been harassed and hounded, in defiance of law, by the regime and by its thugs, Nashi, the Putinjugend.HM Ambassador has been harassed and hounded in a way that should once have meant war.Those who have dared defy the Russian regime – and you have no idea how often I have been forced to stop myself writing, ‘Soviet’ – have been prosecuted, persecuted, and poisoned.No reasonable person believes for a moment that the regime’s hands are not imbrued with the blood of the journalist Anna Stepanovna Politkovskaya, murdered on VV Putin’s birthday as a macabre present for him, and of the assassinated dissident Alexander Valterovich Litvinenko.No reasonable person doubts for a moment that the Russian regime was behind the attempted assassination of Ukraine’s Viktor Andriyovych Yushchenko by dioxin poisoning.

In August 2007, the Russian air arm resumed its Cold War era ‘long range patrols’ of the Tu-95 ‘Bear’ strategic nuclear bombers, to the edge of British airspace and on occasion, it is believed, in violation thereof.In scenes all too familiar from the Cold War, the RAF has resumed scrambling to meet these threats.

MI5 – to use the common, if inadequate, shorthand – reported in November 2007 that Russian espionage in the UK remained at Cold War levels.

I could go on.But let me concentrate on the Georgian situation.

One constant thread in the regime’s self-pitying self-presentation, and its propaganda, from the British Council disputes to Russia’s obsessive fear that any nation that adjoins any nation that adjoins any nation that adjoins its borders might exchange so much as a Christmas card with Nato, is its ‘stab-in-the-back’ myth.Russia insists, loudly, that it is a Great Power, the very greatest, the equal of all others and the superior of most; it insists equally stridently that is a persecuted victim, forever forced to defend itself and its interests and its very security from the rapacious and evil West … and from China, and from Japan, and, no doubt, from the villagers of Darfur, come to that.Oh, and from International Jewry, naturally.

Georgiaflanks Russia on its vulnerable underbelly; it borders Turkey, Azerbaijan, Armenia, and theBlack Sea; and the Baku-Supsa and Baku-Tbilisi-Ceyhan (BTC) pipelines pass through the country – and not its separatist areas, either.It is pro-Western, has applied for Nato membership and is expected to receive it in December 2008 if the country is not enslaved in the interim, and has – for obvious reasons having to do with similar experiences at the hands of the Tsars and Commissars – exceptionally close ties with Poland, Ukraine, the Baltic States, and, indeed, Finland.Worse still, it stood with the West in Kosovo and in Iraq, with deployed troops.

These factors, particularly the Nato membership process, have had the Rodinafuehrer, Herr Putin, chewing the proverbial carpet; although I shouldn’t put much stock in any promises he may make to the Reichsduma that Georgia is the last territorial demand he will make in Transcaucasia….

The road to war and the maskirovka:

As before noted, the Russians had for years inserted themselves into the ‘disputed’ reasons as – wait for it – neutral peacekeepers: this whilst funding, arming, and protecting the separatists.

At the Nato meeting at Bucharest earlier this year, France and Germany opposed going forward ‘at that time’ with a Membership Action Plan for Georgia, specifically so as not to anger Putin and endanger French and German energy imports from Russia.At the same time, Nato reaffirmed that Georgia would be granted Nato membership.

This brilliant feat of Franco-German diplomacy managed to ditch the Georgians, anger the US – and HMG – and leave Putin an excuse for his ‘we’re being surrounded’ shrieks to the Reichstag, I mean Duma, whilst knowing that Georgia was unsupported and unprotected.In April, according to the Associated Press, Voldemor Voldemorovich ‘vowed to broaden Russian support for two separatist Georgian regions and warned Georgia and the West against the use of force or pressure to bring them back under central government control’.

That wasn’t the half of it.What has happened since is astounding.It is a profound historical irony that all of the lies the Left told and tells about the US / UK intervention in Iraq to enforce the broken armistice of 1991, are the sober truth of the Sov- – er, Russian – invasion of what is admittedly Georgian territory.

Anyone who thinks that the similarity of those narratives is coincidental should contact Messrs Radek and Muenzenberg, who have a bridge to sell you.

Beginning in June, there was a new round of high-level talks between Russia and Georgia regarding the separatist regions.

In late July and the first week of August, Russia made other moves around the global chessboard.

On 4 August 2008, Russia delivered two dozen new Su-30MK ‘Flanker’ fighter jets to Hugo Chavez, capable of reaching the Panama Canal, Gitmo, and Puerto Rico.

Also on 4 August, General of the Army Alexey Fyodorovich Maslov, Commander in Chief, Russian Ground Forces, was removed by Defence Minister AE Serdyukov, as the last phase of his military efficiency and reform programme.1914-1918 chaps may consider this equivalent to the completion of the Kiel Canal.

On 5/6 August, in Turkey, the BTC oil pipeline was sabotaged.

On 6 August, the resumption of direct negotiations for the first time in a decade between South OssetiaandGeorgiawas announced – and confirmed by the Russian ambassador to Georgia, Yuri Popov.

It is here that things become opaque.The South Ossetian paramilitary forces clearly broke the ceasefire whilst the diplomats were at the table on 7 August.Georgia, having endured this in the past, chose not to endure it this time, perhaps because of the inherent betrayal of having diplomats jawing at them whilst a sneak attack went on under the cover of the negotiations: Americans will call to mind 7 December 1941. We do not yet know what role the Russians played directly in appearing to give Georgia the green light to restore order in what is after all its own territory.But it is clear that the Georgians were lured into a trap.

Georgiahad one chance, or so it seemed: to secure the Roki Tunnel in time to prevent Russian ‘assistance’ to the separatists.They might well have managed had the situation been as much of a surprise to Russia as it was to Georgia.

The Russians however had guilty foreknowledge.

The ceasefire was breached by the Ossetes at approximately 10.30 local time on 7 August.By midnight, Georgia announced it was entering the province to restore order.Within two hours, the Russian 58th Combined Arms Army was entering the Roki Tunnel.

Additionally, Georgia was subjected to cyberwarfare attacks precisely similar to those laid on by the regime, through Nashi, against Estonia in 2007. The rest we know – militarily speaking.But what is unarguably clear from this is that the Russian forces were tasked, fuelled, and pre-positioned, waiting for the trap to be sprung.This was not a spontaneous response to an unprovoked Georgian attack (on, mind, its own citizens, in any case).This was an Operation Canned Goods 1939.

We will next examine the consequences, intended and unintended, of these events, and what the West can and must do next.